Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Meet me at the mall

I write this from the 'biggest little city in the world,' a veritable tank of bloodsucking fish. Sipping mount gay rum without the rocks, couldn't seem to find any in the freezer. Recently returning from a walk scaling the pressure hosed sidewalks of Reno. Visiting a few friends along my travels in route to god knows where.

I went down to take a look at the city. It's economic and cultural death is apparent, similar to the thin surface of Detroit. Yet it's hard to say with my years if it ever held true life at all. And by 'true' i mean facile, progressive, intelligent life. Every street seemed to be under construction. Advertisements cried out catches with a lack of thought, a lack of caring anymore (even about business).

I was sitting by the Truckee River that runs through downtown. A pretty little river with cobblestone banks and a flat green iridescence. A pallid sky awash with high cirrus clouds pulled a light breeze atop the city. I had my freshly shaven head bared to the wind and was soaking up the most warmth i've felt in months. It struck me there, my youth and the way i have forgotten it. I have become so adept and insouciant with my pinball lifestyle. Often i come to new places with my old things and then fleet swiftly barely looking back. It has become prosaic; my reaction time running second to the spontaneity of moving overnight.

And sitting there by the water today i recalled an old physical sensation that resides somewhere in the gut. That feeling that speaks of how small i am. How much space resounds between what we deem solid things. It's the sensation of immensity and it somehow gives way to a feeling of good fortune. I start breathing deeper, grasping independence and thanking somebody/something for the ability to live so freely. This experience draws easily from the innervation of youth. I don't know why... perhaps it's the admittance of weakness or smallness in the face of vast dynamism.

I haven't felt that way in some time. I remember nearly a decade back walking along the streets of New York City. I was fifteen years old, with a heavy backpack... a callow young man with barely a whisker on my face. At that age i felt the world to be a much more immense, active, and sometimes overwhelming place than i do now. Since then i've grown more callous and taken discomfort or challenge for granted or welded it for kicks. But today i remembered my youth and how lucky i am to be here.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Competition in California

I once read that "nature uses extraordinarily ingenious techniques to avoid conflict and competition, and that cooperation is extraordinarily widespread throughout nature." Always of naturalist mindset, i have contested that humans were an inscrutable part of nature. And yet, ever since i arrived in California i have done the complete opposite of this quote. I have rapt myself in contest~ skiing, playing basketball and shooting pool. Perhaps this is a reflection of paucity similar to an iron-deficient anemic eating dirt. I don't know... i just feel like winning right now and i certainly wasn't doing that in my domestic situation (as i like to refer to it).

And that's where my car comes in. A lost cause, a gauranteed pit of monetary malformity. I have inked myself to the American tradition of car-love. My car has a name, Wheaton; a gender, female; a personality, loyal; and i talk to her and rub the dashboard like every other goddamn car-lover.

I believe my car is now the role-player of challenge and adversity. Perhaps a sobering additive to my streak of competitive play. I expect this vehicular drama to further propel me in the wise teachings of balance, a furthermore important libran enterprise. So instead of summiting Mount Bali for the abolition of my wiseacring, i undertake the court of car maintenance. A spectacle that no American can demur.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Okie on the road

I was Tom Joad pushing a loaded sedan westward, fingers white to the knuckle, back aching hunched over the wheel. I counted four white-out storms to cross my path. One delivered in northern Idaho established spindrifts across the roadway which bit into the wheelwells with the sound of sand.

Hadn't passed a night soundly in four revolutions... could count the hours on my fingers and toes. My eyes felt dry and irritated, drinking coffee like water. Sixteen hours passed like that; stopping once to watch the Steelers/Colts first half at the first Nevadan casino i could find. Ordered two beers and a burger and watched the game standing. I could sense discomfort all around me. The bar ghouls made nervous by my erect position. I couldn't sit though, my posterior numb and aching from the past six hundred miles.

I left the bar lighter, climbed into my car and pulled into the nearest station. While filling up the tank i noticed a curious drip falling near the toe of my shoe. Crouching down i inspected a slight gas leak to compliment further the demise of my vehicle. I lurched inside once more and gritted my teeth for the final two hundred miles, a constant eye to the gauge and remembering the mechanic's recent mention of a small exhaust leak. Wondering if i'd ever register the moment when my car blew sky high, gas igniting, a nearby bank of snow momentarily reflecting red and orange. Too much... I turned up the dial to sportsradio and played dumb the rest of the way to California.

"Three hundred thousand in California and more coming. And in California the roads full of frantic people running like ants to pull, to push, to lift, to work. For every manload to lift, five pairs of arms extended to lift it; for every stomachful of food available, five mouths open."
~The Grapes of Wrath

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Moving on...

This will be a week to make stories for the future. The one in which i load a car of only four gears with everything i own and head west yet again. A nervous twitch has reached my eyes and an aching hollow has entered my stomach. My nerves bend from the obvious trials of vehicular peril, but also from the current exigency of my relationship. It seems to be coming from every direction just as the snow flies outside in the latest snowstorm.

A few weeks back i made the resolution to leave this town. In all likelihood it will find me both thankful and regretful. I have a knack for letting just about everything influence my decision-making. Always some reasoning to eliminate the possibility of future grievances for the present choice of route. This one is even more ponderous and ambagious then the last. Perhaps my erstwhile partner made matters of splitting and relocation a far simpler matter. She had her mind made up and foresaw a future without me. Whereas i saw a ten foot jesus and flashing arrow to take my leave. That was the tale of last year's getaway from Juneau, Alaska.

One of my favorite nuances of gathering my things together again~ is discovering all the junk i've quickly compiled since the last venture. And managing to sort and discard all the unnecessary possessions leaves me light, literally and figuratively. It's a painful, yet needed experience. I feel that i frequently need to purge my supplies. One day i hope to discover how i can do this, while still remaining in a given town.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Let's celebrate relativity!

On New Year’s Eve a great thaw struck the land. Temperatures soared into the high thirties and forties. Ancient banks of snow and ice melted to form behemothic puddles of mud and slush. Work was slightly discomfiting, boorish customers complained of competitive prices and quasi-generous yippies donated bags of outworn clothing, requesting write-off slips to save money in April.

I slipped out of work early and went and bought a six-pack. Walked a few blocks to the old Teton Theatre, which opened in 1941. Went in for the matinee; found an aisle to myself, kicked my feet over the front seats and popped the cap of a beer. For three hours I watched a rampaging colossal ape pound T-Rexes, save beautiful blonds, and climb New York Skyscrapers. It was a very enjoyable experience at matinee prices.

Meanwhile the plastic-surgery gang was readying in Times Square. A million gathered to watch the Ball drop with Dick, while another three-hundred million poised in the eye of their teles for the unrivaled kairotic moment. I imagined the streets in the morning littered with shredded paper confetti, perhaps some top-secret documents shivered for the celebration. Dick was having his make-up applied for the fourth time, his toupee realigned and pace-maker set for the r-u-s-h.

Around that time I was walking home. I was thinking about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, about the subsequent celebration underway which I had no intention of joining. I was also remembering an obsolete newspaper article of last week’s. Something about scientists adding one “leap” second to the world’s atomic clock. They were doing it out of general boredom and lack of physical or mental exercise; due in part to the Earth’s rotational slowing. Apparently, this would be the 23rd second added since 1972.

It brought to mind the fact that not only are our views on the passage of time persistently different from one to the next, but we also live within the bounds of cut-and-dry time zones which are difficult to scientifically posit. That coupled with the fact that of the five clocks in my home (wristwatch, two alarms, telephone, and oven) no two are the same or even within a minute of telling. This fact never seems to ill-effect anything substantially. What an incredibly insignificant notion and invalid piece for the front page!

It recalled a time before the year 2000 when I shared a home in Olympia with my first lover. We lived in a habitable duplex a few miles from the campus I was attending. Our shelves were full of new age, self-work type literature that we heartily hustled into our home and devoured as prophecy. Metaphysical adventure novels, I-ching translations, and numerous astrological texts. One day in accordance to our hopes of enlightenment we veiled or stored away all the clocks and exiled two mirrors to the closet, in the company of the water-heater. We hoped that such travails would repay us somehow. We were young, optimistic, naïve and in love.

It’s interesting how thoughts and memory connect together haphazardly. An invisible chain of recollection sustains and continues itself. Seemingly unaffiliated remembrances spur the propagation of deeper introspection. I was caught in such a cyclical bind.

Nearing midnight I fastened my yaktrax coils to my running shoes, dressed smartly for the cold, and donned a headlamp. Heading for downtown my feet glued to the slick sidewalk and waded through icy puddles. I always feel like Spiderman when I wear these traction apparati. I reached the city centre at the stroke of midnight. Strolling through the downtown park I heard the collective roar of drunken half-hearted whooping. Lecherous ghouls were leaning forward on pretty women with their drooling labios puckered for osculation. Likewise, unfettered lassies crooned for a little romance in the tight confines of a sour saloon.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I looked up into the sky, peering at the few stars visible above the lamplight. Fireworks lit the sky sporadically, lifting from the backyards of mansions and three-car garages. This is how I brought in the last New Year when I lived on the Atlantic. I spent the evening alone walking and jogging the streets at midnight.

I like the lonely sound of distant voices collectively hollering. And in this snowy setting, I reminded myself of a content Grinch overlooking the Whos singing carols in Whoville. I could hear elk on the refuge bugling in the distance. I imagined their frightened eyes musing the city and its idiosyncratic racquet from afar. I thought about the dogs and cats huddled in doorways and beneath tables, scared as shit. And then I walked home.